Re: Ideas for World Hierarchy Example

In message <C7CdnQWrWr8ePjfYnZ2dnUVZ_tKjnZ2d_at_comcast.com>, Lew <lew_at_nowhere.com> writes
>Neo writes
>> Currently the world hierarchy example stores the following (and misc
>> info about some of them):
>>
>> Planets (9)
>
>Now the PTB have reduced that to 8. You might need to add DwarfPlanets.
>(Would the Earth's Moon qualify? Astronomically speaking, the
>Earth-Moon system is more a double planet than a primary / satellite
>system.)
>
>> US States & Nicknames (50)
>
>What about Territories and Protectorates, like the Marshall Islands,
>U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico? What about the District of
>Columbia? Foreign embassies?

What's required is a semantic database that maps concepts. In a hierarchy there may be multiple routes between parent and child. For instance you could have Nation as a parent, federations below that and the USA below that. Logically the next level down would be the state, but it's not that simple. Yes you need a route down from USA to US State but you have to recognise that for some purposes DC is a state, and for other purposes it isn't. So you need three concepts as siblings; all states including DC, all states except DC and DC alone. You may also need to consider the contiguous states, Hawaii and Alaska. Then throw in Puerto Rico as a sibling to the concept of state within the US.

A big part of the problem is how to manage the complexity of a system which is potentially capable of modelling very fine distinctions between categories.

(Oh, and for a 10 point bonus devise a model that permits concepts to be added to the model even if they don't have a precise English translation.)

-- 
Bernard Peek
back in search of cognoscenti